2006-12-02

Validating XML against an XSD schema

I have a new job. Well, I say "new" but I actually started in December 2005. Anyway, this "new" job requires me to develop compact framework apps. Seeing as Delphi doesn't support CF I am developing my application in VS2005, it's a really nice tool but I miss ECO so much!

One thing I had to do was to write an XML importer routine. This would retrieve an XML file detailing tasks due for the next seven days and then import it into the PPC's database. Because I am not responsible for generating the XML, and because it is good practise anyway, I decided to create an XSD file to validate the XML. PDA's have very little storage resources (the flash card is shared between disk and memory) so I decided to read the XML file a line at a time using the XmlReader so that the contents don't exist on the flash memory twice (disk + memory), another benefit of this approach being that I can read it directly from a ZIP file too!

In dotnet V2 the class XmlValidatingReader is obsolete, not that it would have been much good anyway considering it is not implemented in V1 of the compact framework. After some playing around I was finally able to read the XSD information from a resourced embedded into my app, and read the XML one line at a time whilst validating it against that XSD file.

Here it is:

//1 Get a stream containint the XSDStream xsdStream = GetType().Assembly.GetManifestResourceStream("Eden.HandheldVendor.TaskFlow.DataImport.xsd");//2) Create an XmlTextReader that uses this streamXmlReader xsdReader = new XmlTextReader(xsdStream);//Create an XmlSchema from the embedded XSDSystem.Xml.Schema.XmlSchema xsdSchema = System.Xml.Schema.XmlSchema.Read(xsdReader, null);

//4) Create some XmlReaderSettings that use this XmlSchemaXmlReaderSettings readerSettings = new XmlReaderSettings();readerSettings.ValidationType = ValidationType.Schema;readerSettings.Schemas.Add(xsdSchema);

//5) Set an event for validation errorsreaderSettings.ValidationEventHandler += new System.Xml.Schema.ValidationEventHandler(readerSettings_ValidationEventHandler);